This invention relates to the field of paddle assemblies, for example, paddle assemblies used in separating, grinding, comminuting, breaking, and otherwise processing a material. For example, paddle assemblies may be used in continuous flow material processing equipment, which may grind and/or otherwise refine a material to be processed.
It is desirable in a wide variety of industries to process materials (e.g., organic materials, inorganic materials, mixtures thereof, etc.). For example, it may be desirable to separate and/or grind a particular material to prepare the material for a downstream application and/or subsequent processing. In some instances, the processing may include contacting a material to be processed with one or more paddles for the purpose of separating, grinding, comminuting, breaking, and otherwise processing a material.
For example, grinding and comminuting apparatus are used for reducing the size of materials, such as food products, chemicals, rubbers, resins, garbage (e.g., food waste), waste-paper, wood chips, waste fiber (e.g., cloth, gypsum), plastics, glass, metal chips, or the like. Conventional grinding/comminuting apparatus, such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,129,260, issued Dec. 12, 1978 to Baker, entitled Garbage Disposal, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,973,735, issued Aug. 10, 1976 to Ito et al., entitled Apparatus For Pulverizing And Sorting Municipal Waste, typically include a grinding chamber with high speed rotating beaters/hammers that tear, shred, slash, cut, and/or grind one or more desired products to a desired size.
However, depending on the material contacted by the paddles, the processing conditions, and the construction of the paddle assemblies (e.g., including the engagement thereof to a rotating drive shaft), obstructions that contact the paddles have been known to damage (e.g., breaking, bending, plastically deforming, etc.) rotating paddle assemblies and/or other portions of the processing equipment (e.g., drive shaft, drive source, etc.). Repairing or replacing paddle assemblies and other portions of the processing equipment can be costly, due to, for example, increased capital and labor expense, as well as increased downtime.
In some processing equipment, the failure of a single paddle assembly has been known to cause damage to one or more additional paddle assemblies or may otherwise reduce the processing efficiency of the processing equipment to an undesirable level. The reduced processing efficiency may require prematurely shutting down the processing equipment to repair the single damaged paddle assembly, resulting in decreased processing time and increased downtime.
Thus, improved paddle assemblies and processing equipment are desired to, for example, reduce maintenance time, maintenance expense, and/or processing equipment downtime.